[huxley]

A political party that dragged the US into two wars with minor countries with insignificant military resources, both of which could be totally dominated with an air war. And the US still had terrible trouble trying to keeping those wars "won".

Not exactly the same sort of conflicts and anyone who thinks they are comparable is a menace.

[justaman]

The US had problems "keeping those wars 'won'" because the US had to attempt to minimize civilian deaths. If there ever is an event where this isnt the case, you can bet it would be wrapped up in a few weeks.

[mkaziz]

Yeesh, minimize civilian deaths?

"The Iraq Body Count project (IBC) figure of Documented civilian deaths from violence is 155,923 – 174,355 as of March 2016. This includes reported civilian deaths due to Coalition and insurgent military action, sectarian violence and increased criminal violence.[19] The IBC site states: "it should be noted that many deaths will probably go unreported or unrecorded by officials and media."[20] The IBC website currently states that, "Further analysis of the WikiLeaks' Iraq War Logs may add 12,000 civilian deaths.""

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War#Ira...

150,000 CIVILIAN deaths, by just one count alone!

[shuntress]

'minimize' not 'eliminate'

I think it's a safe bet that if the strategy in Iraq had been 'Use airborne ordinance to turn the country in to glass' the war would have been 'won' much sooner with far higher civilian casualties.

[vkou]

You can't win against an insurgency by turning the country into glass. Saddam's army was defeated in the first few weeks.

[mcguire]

150,000? Wow, that might even be more than the Al-Anfal campaign.

[dagenleg]

Yeah, remember Vietnam war? Was over in two weeks. Remember Soviet Afghan war? That one was over even quicker!